Attended by 27 participants in the Conference Room, many expressed that the session on Learning 2.0 was an eye-opener for them. The reports on mobile learning from the converence attended by Danny, Harvinder and Yuzery were interesting and highlighted some of the lessons learnt.

16 March 2009

The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE)briefed all invitees of all public and private universities at the Bengkel Jerayawara Anugerah Akademik Negaraat PICC in Putrajaya today. MOHE is inviting applications for any or all of the six national academic awards:

IQRI's first retreat for OUM internal auditors was held at Awana Genting. It was officiated and declared open by YBhg Professor Tan Sri Anuwar Ali, President and Vice-Chancellor at 3pm. Tan Sri emphasized the need for OUM to ensure quality in all aspects of our work at OUM when catering to the needs of our learners. He stressed the need for workshop participants to also deliberate on how they can further contribute to OUM's quality journey.

The workshop started with a panel comprising the heads of the four departments that have ISO certification and the Chief Financial Officer. Chaired by Prof Madya Dr. Wahab, the panel members shared some of their experiences and issues surfaced during auditing or in preparation for audits. This provided some of the input necessary for further deliberation by OUM internal auditors.

Attended by about 50 internal auditors, the retreat aimed to provide and enhance skills in finding the root cause of problems, such as those uncovered through audits. The workshop was facilitated by two external facilitators along with Prof Madya Dr. Wahab and Puan Ruzita, our chief internal auditor and deputy chief internal auditor, respectively, together with Prof Zoraini, IQRI Director and Tn Hj Mohd Izanee, PP Kuantan Director, the workshop achieved its objectives.

The resolution from the workshop were shared with SVP and will soon be presented to the members of the GMC.

08 January 2009

Richard Ng gave an interesting tea talk on Online Supplemental Learning (OSI). The presentation is based on a paper that was presented at the AAOU2008 conference held in Tianjin, China last October. The paper won a sliver award. The attendees were a mixed group: Deans, Professors and our younger academicians including a couple of instructional designers and an editor from OUM.

Interesting approach to help overcome student weakness in basic mathematics - online supplemental instruction. The OSI model of instruction would include Pre-instructional Workshop, Coaching and Mentoring, and Short Video Clips on You-Tube. The model allows for collaborative work and clearly increases synergy in the discussion forums. Selected learners become mentors and provide help and guidance to the weaker learners; not a too far-fetched concept, since we have long heard of peer-tutoring. So it was good to see how it worked successfully online. When learners help others, it helps reinforce what they know and what they have learned. Being able to get help from the mentors, i.e. coursemates, will also help reduce the anxiety level of the weaker students who normally will not ask questions or ask for help. Keep in mind though that this does not mean that the tutors will no longer be doing anything. In fact, the tutors have to play an active role in coming up with the activities or assignments suited for collaborative learning. And it is the tutor who has carefully selected the learners who have the potential to be good mentors.

The addition of short video-clips on You-Tube further helps students grasp topics that are slightly more difficult to understand just by reading. They get the benefit of seeing how problems are worked out with or without the audio, as many times as needed to understand the methods used, and they can do it at their own time.

The OSI approach seems applicable to any course offered at OUM. According to our speaker, there is still more to be done, but one of the steps to be taken next will be to educate and train the OUM tutors nationwide on using OSI in their courses.

We thank Mr. Richard Ng for taking the time to share his work with us and we commend him and his team for their achievement.

The first staff/department meeting for the year was held in the morning....we aim to achieve much more this year to help spur quality assurance efforts at OUM. Also in the pipeline are more research projects among OUM academicians and several innovative learning projects to help make learning more effective.